In 1986, on International Women's Day in Toronto, a contingent
of garment workers from the International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union (ILGWU) marched under a new banner designed
especially for the day. They were celebrating what appeared to be
a new beginning. They had successfully won an industry-wide
strike. They had thrown off the yoke of a male- dominated union
leadership, with more rank and file women active on the stewards'
council. Their participation marked an important shift in
contemporary feminist politics toward a more inclusive movement
that recognized the importance of combining issues of class,
gender and ethnicity.

By 1993, following the passage of the United States-Canada
Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and in anticipation of its extension
to include Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), garment workers were again on the streets. They were
protesting the exploitative conditions of industrial homework,
seen to be on the increase in some of the larger cities of
Canada.

How had the Canadian garment industry changed? Were immigrant
women entering a new period of militant unionism or being thrown
backward to an earlier time when sweatshop conditions prevailed?
What new strategies are favoured by garment workers in the face
of debates about the need for retraining in a competitive global
economy?

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the
Canadian garment industry in transition. It begins with a brief
analysis of the theoretical literature, drawn from both Marxist
and feminist debates about the restructuring of work, especially
as these debates have helped to shape political responses to the
restructuring process. The paper presents evidence to suggest
that the Canadian garment industry is in transition, with new
corporate strategies existing alongside more traditional forms of
manufacturing. It considers the role of governments in the
restructuring process, especially the way in which the Canadian
state has encouraged continental economic integration with the
United States and Mexico. This chapter seeks to understand how
feminist anti-racist initiatives in educational policy place the
needs of immigrant workers at the centre of the retraining
debate.2

The initial field work for this study involved four factory
sites and seventy in-depth taped interviews with immigrant women
sewing machine operators, packers, bundlers, spreaders and
pressers. To help with language interpretation, I worked with
women who were familiar with the working class immigrant
communities. Women workers were interviewed in English, Chinese,
Vietnamese, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish.

Interviews with rank and file workers were supplemented with
an analysis of union records, participant observation in the
union office, regular attendance at union meetings, and by
interviews with plant managers, union representatives and
industry specialists. Tours of factories were conducted in Canada
and the United States.

The interviews were carried out in two stages between 1985 and
1987, and again in 1990, following the introduction of the FTA.
In the later stage, I returned to one of the factories to
interview a smaller sample of men who worked as cutters, shippers
and material handlers. From 1987 to 1992, I kept in touch with
developments in the industry by observing the monthly meetings of
the Fashion Industry Liaison Committee (FILC), a municipal
committee convened by city councillors representing the fashion
district from the New Democratic Party (NDP). The mandate of the
committee is to lobby city, provincial and federal governments on
behalf of the fashion industry. This committee includes community
college educators, representatives from the garment unions,
retailers and garment manufacturers.

The Canadian political economy tradition has its roots in left
nationalist debates about the character of the Canadian state and
its relationship to Canada's industrial base. Rianne Mahon made
an important contribution from within this tradition by examining
the role of the Canadian state in regulating textile imports in
exchange for the sale of Canadian staple products and resources.
She examined the process whereby Canadian textile capital became
increasingly consolidated, so that only a few companies dominated
the domestic market (Matron, 1984). More recently, the literature
has shifted to an analysis of the government's role in helping to
set the stage for intercontinental integration and
rationalization of the major industries in which Canadian women
are employed (Cohen, 1987). Thus far, little attention had been
paid to the restructuring of Canadian garment capital, which is
perceived to be scattered among small manufacturers with little
political power. A labor-intensive industry, the garment industry
has remained highly protected, with unions often allied with
small manufacturers to save the industry from import penetration.

As this paper will demonstrate, the industry is in transition.
Changes in the industry demand new strategies.

Labour process perspective

The labour process perspective has drawn attention to the
political culture of work organization and the historical
transformation of managerial control (Braverman, 1974; Burawoy,
1979; Edwards, 1979). The feminist contribution has been to
extend the boundaries of workplace studies to understand the way
that gender relations have transformed organizational theory and
workplace struggles (eg., Cockburn, 1985 and Coyle, 1982
(England); Steedman, 1986 (Canada); Lamphere, 1979 (United
States)). My own contribution has called for a new feminism that
combines issues of class, gender and ethnicity. Based on a case
study of a unionized garment factory, my earlier research
examined women's double day of labour and the barriers to women's
active participation in the union (Gannagé, 1986).

Global feminist perspective

The global feminist perspective focuses on global labour
markets and the international division of labour. The unequal
relationship between core and periphery countries is explained
within the context of a global manufacturing system divided along
gender and racial lines. Swasti Mitter (1986) is especially
concerned with the world-wide subcontracting process made
possible by new developments in technology and the mobility of
capital within transnational enterprises. The increasing
casualization and marginalization of women's work in the
quasi-legal sector characterizes the fragmentation of work as
capital moves operations from North to South (see also Nash and
Fernandez-Kelly, 1983). Women's resistance through participation
in non-governmental organizations is highlighted as a major
catalyst for social change.

International labour studies

A newly emerging approach to labour studies examines work
relations in both developing countries and the first world
(Munck, 1988; Cohen, 1991). Recognizing that different historical
patterns of industrial development have occurred, this approach
analyses the labour process, the role of unions and the way in
which the state has shaped workplace struggles. According to
Elson (1991), male-biased approaches ignore gender relations,
especially the role of women in the development process.

Each of these perspectives has been influential in shaping the
discussion about the nature of industrial restructuring around
the globe. In Canada, immigrant workers in the clothing industry
are uniquely positioned because of their experience of two
cultures across national boundaries, their history of struggle,
and their spirit of survival in the face of tremendous
difficulties created by the new industrial giants and their
political representatives in government.

Cloakmakers in the ILGWU, primarily from eastern Europe,
resisted changes to the organization of their work in 1966. A
story in the Toronto Star carried the headline, 'Garment workers
fight mass production'.3 Referred to as the 'Artex
rebels', a dozen skilled craftsmen in Toronto protested that
factory owners threatened to hire non-union labour to open a
sportswear shop. The skilled tailors feared that their jobs would
be lost if the conventional method of making the whole garment
were to be replaced by a new section system used widely in the
men's clothing industry. Their fears were gender based. At the
time, new employees were mainly Italian, Greek and Portuguese
immigrant women. The union struck a compromise to protect the
existing cloak shops which used the conventional method, while
allowing new shops in the sportswear industry to introduce the
section system.

In the 1990s, the demographic characteristics of the labour
force, ownership patterns, and style of work in the Canadian
ladies' clothing industry have changed. Technology has been
introduced as part of a massive restructuring process which has
transformed the industry from top to bottom. The restructuring
process is multifaceted and has proceeded with government and
manufacturers working in tandem. In less successful operations,
new technology has been used by management to downsize, while
more successful enterprises have expanded overtime, shift work
and part-time work. With an increasing reliance on technological
innovation in factories whose owners could afford to modernize or
received government aid to do so, the occupational structure of
the workforce has shifted from both male and female skilled craft
work in the cloak and dress industry, respectively, to
female-dominated assembly line production, section work and
industrial homework in the newly-created sportswear industry.

The restructuring process, begun in the late 1960s and early
1970s, accelerated with the passage of the FTA. During the year
following the introduction of the FTA, from June 1989 to June
1990, the clothing industry lost 23,000 jobs, an 18 per cent
decline in employment. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the
main labour federation in Canada, estimates that in the first two
years under the free trade agreement with the United States,
582,000 fewer jobs were created in the Canadian economy than
could be expected under average conditions (Canadian Labour
Congress, 1993: 116).

Reskilling or deskilling?

Gender relations have changed at the top of the pyramid
structure as well as at the bottom. Changing attitudes in
business have seen more women assuming managerial positions.
Daughters and wives of owners are becoming divisional heads and
paid employees of the company, instead of 'helping out' fathers
and brothers.

Jobs have been created in business services, warehouse
distribution and import houses. A new strata of white collar
clerical personnel are employed in offices of human resources
management. The rationalization of the office to meet the
pressure of just-in-time delivery threatens the employment of
this largely non-unionized clerical workforce. Electronic data
interchange systems have eliminated the need for clothing
retailers to keep costly inventories. Rapid response and fast
turnover to fill special orders entail a closer interface between
manufacturer and retailer. The demand for increased productivity
and greater flexibility is passed onto the already vulnerable
white collar workforce (Dagg and Fudge, 1992).

The more skilled aspects of pattern making and grading have
been taken out of the hands of male cutters to become highly
trained positions for computer operators and programmers. In
owner-managed factories, trusted family members, or even the
owner, use computer aided design systems. A few senior cutters
have been pushed into middle management positions. Some openings
have emerged in the highly-paid mechanical field, positions that
have been given to men (see also Cockburn, 1985).

Computer aided design and manufacturing has made it possible
to design and cut patterns in Canada and transfer the assembly
work to states in the United States or offshore where labour
standards and wages are lower. Women are employed in the less
challenging aspects of this traditionally male-dominated craft,
in laying and cutting the fabric.

Automated material handling systems, used in some shops since
the early 1970s, carry the work to sewing machine operators,
eliminating the jobs of bundle girls. With a press of a button, a
hanger drops down beside a sewing machine operator. She sews a
single seam or dart and presses the button again. The automated
conveyor belt transports the garment to the next operator for the
next operation.

Piece work

In the sewing room, young women are expected to perform more
than one operation. They are rotated from job to job to meet the
employer's requirement for a flexible workforce, while older
workers do the same job day in and day out. An administrative
apparatus based on prescribed rules and procedures, fewer
supervisory personnel and the reliance on conveyors to control
the pace of work has made it easier for management to track
workers' performance. Electronic monitors built into the
individual work stations are used to check the speed of sewing
machine operators.

On the factory floor, changes in the social organization of
work have given rise to new forms of wage payment. Because of the
transitional character of the industry in Canada, no single
method of calculating piece wages predominates in a largely piece
work industry. Multinational firms have developed standardized
methods of wage payment, used in subsidiary firms. More than one
method for calculating the wage may exist. Workers in the cutting
room may be paid by the hour, while those who work as sewing
machine operators may be paid under an incentive system. Various
accounting procedures are used to pay piece wages, ranging from
the traditional ticket system of quality control to more complex
calculations of workers' output based on the standard allowed
minute. In a multi-ethnic work environment, numerically-based
accounting systems increase the demand for English literacy and
mathematical numeracy.

Workers' resistance to the intensification of work may take
the form of individual responses such as absenteeism or job
shopping. Coordinated resistance on the shop floor, such as slow
downs or work stoppages, is used to enforce workers' demands for
improved conditions during contract negotiations. A cutter
reported that some women in his factory engaged in mischievous
play, sewing garments backwards or with the stripes upside down
if management practices seemed especially harsh or unfair. These
activities were timed to cause the most havoc, usually when the
company was under particular pressure to meet special orders or
production deadlines. A shop steward reported that in her
factory, where turnover was especially high, management paid
workers a special bonus for recruiting family members or friends.
Some workers expressed reluctance to comply with such requests
when piece wages were so low.

The ethnic division of labour

Forty-five per cent of the workers in the garment industry are
immigrants, the majority of whom are women whose first language
is neither English nor French. The latest wave of immigration has
brought visible minority women from third world countries to
Canadian garment factories.4 Third world immigration
is seen as part of a global restructuring of the international
migration system. Canada shares with the United States, Australia
and New Zealand a relative openness to ethnically diverse
immigration from third world countries (Simmons, 1990).
Immigrants have fled the ill effects of structural adjustment
programmes or poverty in their home countries (George, 1992).
Once they enter Canada, they join a labour market that is already
structured both ethnically and on class lines (Li, 1988). As they
look for a better life for themselves and their children,
immigrant workers face new managerial strategies and government
policies that threaten to take away their livelihood and the
limited gains that workers have achieved in recent years.

On the factory floor, a combination of different methods have
been used by clothing manufacturers to maintain control of an
ethnically diverse workforce. In one factory that I toured, East
Asian immigrant women from Vietnam, China and Hong Kong were
assigned the 'more delicate tasks' off the assembly line. With
less opportunity to earn bonuses, they reported that their take
home pay was lower. Ethnicity can be used by management to favour
one ethnic group over another for special treatment or
privileges. Black immigrant women reported differential treatment
in terms of layoffs and recall. In another factory, Italian
immigrant workers with a history of union experience were laid
off, while more recent Vietnamese refugees did not lose their
jobs. The tolerance of ethnic traditions in the workplace may be
a cooptive method of winning the confidence and loyalty of new
immigrant workers. In a factory where turnover was a problem for
management, Muslim workers were allowed to take time from their
work to pray in the lunchroom, and were granted time off work to
observe their holy days.

The manner in which firms are restructuring is extremely
diverse and includes the radical transformation of long-standing
enterprises as well as the rapid growth of new enterprises. The
case studies presented below illustrate both the breadth of that
process and the specific ways that companies have tried to
improve their own market position relative to their competitors.
Changes in managerial styles, from entrepreneurial to corporate,
new ownership patterns, and the global context of garment
manufacturing mark a dynamic transition. Multinational firms have
grown, declined and revived alongside smaller family-owned
businesses. Large clothing com- panies have acquired their own
retail chains, bought out their competitors, integrated
vertically or sought international fame through designer-driven
franchise operations and product licensing. Large garment firms
have expanded too quickly and tied their fortunes to an economy
in decline: some manufacturers closed their retail outlets in
Canada to offset losses in the United States. Others, like Mr.
Jax, closed their manufacturing houses.

The threat of factory closure has spelled trouble for unions.
Some firms have sought to undermine already established
collective agreements through wage freezes or capital flight
across provinces and to low wage economies in the United States,
the Caribbean and the Far East; the extension of free trade to
include Mexico creates another opening for capital mobility. Some
firms have co-opted unions by using employee pension funds to
finance rapid expansion schemes.

The rapid change and multiple threats have paralysed union
organizations and hindered their recruitment of members, which
has created fertile ground for the growth of non-union contract
shops and subcontracting to industrial homeworkers (Cameron and
Mak, 1991; Dagg and Fudge, 1992; Leach, 1993). An inquiry into
the conditions of clothing workers revealed that visible minority
workers in non-unionized contract shops were especially
disadvantaged when their factories closed without notice, leaving
them with no jobs and no severance pay (BASIC, n.d.).

At the bottom of this class structure are the growing
proportion of women who take work into their home. The ILGWU
interviewed thirty industrial homeworkers, who were primarily
Chinese-speaking. Most of the homeworkers were paid less than the
minimum wage. Half of them reported difficulty in getting paid
for work completed. Many women were being helped at home by their
children (Dagg and Fudge, 1992:p. 24). The ILGWU has reported a
two-thirds loss in membership since 1986. The expansion of
garment manufacture to new localities outside urban centres, and
even outside the country, poses tough challenges in organizing
the unorganized.

Dylex in Toronto

Dylex is a pioneer in multinational retailing. The company
began by manufacturing sportswear, marketed through retail
outlets it purchased in Canada and the United States. The company
met with success until it ventured into the United States and
bought some failing retail chains (Foxmoor, Brooks and T.
Edwards) at a time when the economy was heading into a downturn.
In 1985, Dylex had 2,700 retail stores in Canada and the United
States. By 1991, the conglomerate was down to 1,500 stores. The
company showed a heavy loss in its Canadian operations in 1986.5
By the first half of 1991, they recorded a loss of 37.6 million
dollars and were closing their Town and Country women's retail
chain in Canada and their Club International, recently acquired
from Monaco Group, in the United States.6 In 1991, the
company announced a twelve month wage freeze among its 20,000
full-and part-time employees.7 Despite these losses,
Dylex is considered to be a major stakeholder in the Canadian
retail market with a strong balance sheet in 1991, with 117
million dollars in cash at hand,8 and control of about
10 per cent of the Canadian apparel retail market.

Alfred Sung and the Monaco Group

While Dylex sought to acquire retail holdings, the emphasis of
Alfred Sung and the Monaco Group was designer-driven. The Monaco
Group based its strategy on the promotion of a single designer,
Alfred Sung, who is known throughout Canada and internationally.
His name was used in marketing and promotion not only in women's
clothing, but also in a variety of products manufactured under
license by other companies. Some 30 per cent of the Alfred Sung
label was manufactured in-house, 50 per cent was manufactured by
Canadian contractors and the rest was manufactured overseas,
primarily in Hong Kong.9 When the Monaco Group posted
a loss in 1991, Alfred Chan and brother Edward Tan, for Etac
Sales Ltd. bought the rights to the Alfred Sung label to market
Alfred Sung clothing world-wide for fifty years. Etac is able to
improve profit margins by using Asian manufacturers and
distribution networks in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tianjin.10

Tan Jay: from Winnipeg to Toronto

Peter Nygard, owner of the Tan Jay line, has also captured
international fashion headlines. Nygard is well known for his
lavish Hollywood-style extravaganzas both in Canada and the
United States. He is also famous for placing whole page
advertisements in Winnipeg newspapers to present his case against
union organizing drives.11 The Manitoba labour board
has ruled that Tan Jay had committed unfair labour practices,
including the refusal to deduct union dues, to allow the union
access to the plant and to pay into the union's retirement and
health and welfare funds. The labour board ruling followed a
history of intimidatory practices used by the company against its
immigrant workforce, many of them from the Philippines. The
company was ordered to pay the union and illegally laid off
employees $150,000 in monies owed and fines.12

Tan Jay employs fifteen hundred workers and has also opened
factories in Montreal and Thunder Bay, with research and design
facilities in New York and Los Angeles and extensive offshore
operations throughout the Orient (Ghorayshi, 1990). Much of
Nygard's success has been underwritten by his political acumen in
lobbying for favourable terms from federal government assistance
programmes to finance the restructuring of his four factories in
Winnipeg. He has now moved his corporate headquarters to Toronto.

Mr. Jax Group of Vancouver

Another feature of the Canadian garment industry is the
expansion of new fashion centres outside the traditional
Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg needle industry. Vancouver's Mr.
Jax is an example of a fashion group that initially had trouble
breaking into the eastern retail market. In 1986, Mr. lax listed
on the Toronto Stock Exchange and purchased West Coast Woollen
Mills in British Columbia. The mill made woollen worsteds and
would become Mr. Jax's domestic fabric supplier.13 In
1987, the Mr. Jax Group acquired Surrey Classics.14
But by 1990, unable to sustain its expansion, Mr. Jax was in the
red, looking to sell to a multinational company who could take
advantage of the United States market.

Mr. Jax Group employed 1400 people across Canada, had six
companies with retail outlets and real estate holdings plus a
state-of-the-art factory housed in a recently purchased building
on Vancouver's waterfront. In the year ending 30 November, 1990,
it posted a loss of 5.9 million dollars. In January, 1991, it
announced the closing of the Surrey Classics Division.15
One hundred and ninety workers were affected by the closure.16

Government strategies

The restructuring of Canadian garment capital has been
supported by federal government policies designed to improve the
competitiveness of Canada's manufacturing base. The previous
regulation of imports as an industrial strategy did not work.
Despite the government's 'protection' of the domestic clothing
industry, the industry showed a decline in employment prior to
the FTA, which could in part be attributed to rationalization and
new technology. Following the introduction of the FTA, industrial
homework increased. As mentioned, some small companies, unable to
compete, have opened import houses or have become non-union shops
in a subcontracting nexus.

The federal government helped manufacturers modernize their
operations with grants through the now defunct Canadian
Industrial Renewal Board. Non-Canadian multinational corporations
have established branch plants in Canada under the auspices of
the also defunct Foreign Investment Review Agency (Matron, 1984).
Work sharing (with the help of unemployment insurance),
subsidized training programmes and tax shelters were also
provided through government assistance programmes (Ghorayshi,
1990).

The Free Trade Agreement

In 1988, the political and economic stage was set for the
introduction of the FTA, which would have disastrous consequences
for workers, unions and small businesses in the ladies' clothing
industry. The FTA has helped to shift the Canadian clothing
import structure from low cost countries to the United States.
The agreement opened the Canadian market to manufacturers based
in the United States while helping big clothing firms in Canada
to move production south of the border; it also helped large
clothing manufacturers-turned-retailers in Canada to ship their
manufactured apparel goods duty free to their existing retail
outlets in the United States. American exports of apparel to
Canada (not including production contracted abroad by US firms)
increased dramatically by 26 per cent in volume and 14 per cent
in value in the first nine months of 1991, following the
introduction of the FTA, although the total market for apparel
was down considerably, with the total volume of imports from all
sources declining by 7 per cent, and by 11 per cent in value
terms (Beatty, 1992: p. 14).